


Up in Smoke

by Legendaerie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ambiguous AU, Culture Shock, M/M, Self destructive behaviors, Smoking, Suicidal Thoughts, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It feels too much like another end in a long string of ends, and John wonders if he’s going to make it out the other side alive or not. Maybe it’ll be like a butterfly, and he’ll just shed everything he knew and loved about his life and wake up one day as someone other than John Egbert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up in Smoke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chokokeki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokokeki/gifts).



> Reposting to Ao3 from freneticrhapsody's tumblr with some added content because of reasons
> 
> wow i actually can't write happy things anymore sorry

He always goes to Rose whenever he fights with Karkat - and he fights with him a lot, to be honest - but Rose is busy or something and he hangs up the phone while her recorded voice is still talking.  
  
Blue eyes, losing their color, raise to the rising sun. It’s like life is stifling him, somehow, choking him like the tie had been earlier, but now it’s off and it’s done and he just feels like a discarded shoe.  
  
Fighting with Karkat is nothing new, anyway. They fight over stupid things like movies and why John needed to watch children’s movies for a week; sometime over serious things like insurance and funeral arrangements and why it’s not okay to suggest someone’s parent be culled when they end up in the hospital, but it’s never felt like this before.  
  
It feels too much like another end in a long string of ends, and John wonders if he’s going to make it out the other side alive or not. Maybe it’ll be like a butterfly, and he’ll just shed everything he knew and loved about his life and wake up one day as someone other than John Egbert.  
  
He can hear Karkat moving around inside, still in the after-stages of shoving things around roughly, not yet in the stage where he curls in a corner and cries because he hates the fighting too (and he tries so hard not to let John know but by that time Rose has generally talked all the anger out of John and they find each other right when their hearts have thawed) and John tries Rose again.  
  
Still no answer. She’s probably still on the plane ride back from the funeral. Everyone is.  
  
Everyone’s gone but Karkat.  
  
John weighs the phone in his hand, wishes he lived somewhere closer to a body of water so he could dramatically throw the device in (or maybe drown) but no, he lives on a budget and it’s stupid to waste more money now after spending so much just to put a corpse in the ground.  
  
(He tells himself it’s not Karkat’s fault, it’s just the culture he was raised in. But logic’s not going to take back what he said.)  
  
It’s with a dull surprise that he sees Karkat carry a box out to his car. Their eyes lock, briefly, on the trip back inside - but neither of them breathes a word, and Karkat repeats the action. Movies and books and clothes fill up space poorly until he’s shoving the last bag in and swearing and then just kind of sinks to the ground and starts sobbing.  
  
It’s the only time today he’s cried, and John tightens his jaw and storms back into the house.  
  
\- - -  
  
 _These sort of things only ever happen when it's least expected; the extraordinary disrupts the mundane._  
  
 _John doesn't even bother to answer the phone, instead focuses on picking the burned kernels out of the popcorn bag and feeding them to Karkat._  
  
 _After the movie, as his boyfriend cleans up their mess, studious ignoring John's jibes of "neat freak" the young man redials the missed call number._  
  
 _Three minutes later, he's vomiting in the toilet from shock as Karkat panics, calls their friends and just keeps asking him what's wrong, John, what's wrong? when everything is wrong._  
  
 _Fathers aren't supposed to get in car wrecks with drunk drivers, they're not supposed to have to be cut out of the car they cherished for 20 years even though it didn't even have so much as an airbag.  They're supposed to be there for you to hold you when the most important person in your life can't understand what 'life support' and 'brain dead' mean._  
  
 _Karkat drives him to the hospital in silence._  
  
\- - -  
   
The next morning, halfway through a bowl of cereal, John gets a text message from Rose:  
  
“Are you doing all right? I saw I missed a few of your calls yesterday. Did I leave something at the funeral?”  
  
He doesn’t have the willpower to reply. Instead he swills the milk around in the bottom of the bowl, then dumps it out. He’s got a lot of food to use up on his own now. Why should he care?  
  
He’s halfway to work when he remembers he’s still on leave, and he turns around in a gas station and then, on a whim, picks up a package of cigarettes. His dad always smoked, but from pipes instead - the chemical burn of the tobacco makes his throat hurt, that’s why his eyes are watering.  
  
That’s all. Nothing more.  
  
\- - -  
  
 _"It'll be fine, John," Rose soothes as all six of them sit cloistered in the corner of the waiting room.  Jade's fingers are running through his hair, but he can hardly feel her touch.  All he can see of his friends are their shoes as he stares in the general direction of the floor - Rose and Kanaya in ballet flats in enamel violet and ink black, Jade in moccasins, Dave and Karkat in sneakers.  Kanaya stands firm, tall, on the edge of the group; a silent guardian like Dave as he lounges on the opposite corner, foot tapping slightly to the music of his biorhythms.  But Karkat..._  
  
 _Shifts from foot to foot, uncertain and awkward in front of him, nowhere comfortable for him to be and when he clears his throat John shoots him a glare he doesn't deserve._  
  
 _But he doesn't care._  
  
 _"No, Jade.  No, it won't be."_  
  
 _And he presses his palms to his eyes and prays that he's wrong._  
  
\- - -  
  
The habit forms quicks, as according to his new persona.  He coughs his way terribly through the first cigarette, and the second, but by the third he’s gotten the hang of things.  They replace his meals, his music; he burns through them as he wanders around outside, avoids every room he shared with memories, sucks the hot smoke and tries to blow rings around fireflies.  Every one makes him sick to his stomach, aggrivates his lungs weakened by pnemonia from a few ears back, but he keeps up with it anyway.  Days later, Rose is calling him as he drives to the store, one hand on the wheel and self-destructive careless.  
  
“What’s up?” he croaks.  
  
“Care to explain why you have an ex-boyfriend, and why he’s at my house in New York?”  
  
John hangs up.  
  
\- - -  
  
 _He's not._  
  
 _The surgeons had managed to pick out the glass and the metal but couldn't fix the damage that occurred under his skin, in his brain.  Dave places a fedora gently on the pale head, not quick enough to hide the vicious sutures, and no one dares to take it off._  
  
 _Three days later, as per his will, they cut life support and John spends the night still holding his father's hand long after it went cold._  
  
\- - -  
  
The messages don’t stop, though, but never from Karkat. Jade screams at him, Dave offers his backhanded support/insults and then actually takes the time to drive to his house but John refuses to unlock the door.  
  
“Egbert, so fucking help me, I’m going to kick down this door whether you’re leaning against it or not.”  
  
“No you won’t,” he chokes, on his ninth pack in as many days, and the wooden doorframe shudders.  
  
That was the last time he doubted a Strider’s word.  
  
He unlocks it, and Dave snatches the cigarette from his fingers, pins him down and punches him in the jaw. John snarls in pain, and coughs, and then lays limp and apathetic between wheezes. The blond doesn’t say anything more, just holds him like a child while John gasps for air.  
  
An inhaler is pressed to his lips. He breathes in deep for the first time in days.  
  
“I’m not taking him back, Dave.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“He shouldn’t have said that about my dad.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I miss him so much.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
He doesn’t say who he’s talking about, and doesn’t need to.  
  
\- - -  
  
 _The service is beautiful, filled with music and tears and flowers.  His father's hands are folded around his pipe, scars hidden still by his favorite hat, and Karkat holds his gaze across the grave as they lower the casket in._  
  
 _"I'm sorry," he whispers in John's ear, catching him in a hug as he headed to the car.  But it's not enough._  
  
 _All of the funerals in all the world still aren't enough to mourn, and all the letters and languages still can't find a way to really say what someone meant to you; as a father, a son, a friend.  But they try anyway._  
  
 _So does Karkat, but John's hurting too bad to see._  
  
 _They sent all the flowers home with Kanaya and Rose because their living room was stuffed with boxes from his father's house, everything they couldn't fit in the storage rental.  Clothes and pictures and memories were piled everywhere there was space.  John opens the door to all of this, and snaps._  
  
\- - -  
  
Two days later, he gets a voice message from Rose.  
  
“I hate to intrude upon your grieving, John, but your selfish pain is hurting other people as well. I know what it’s like to miss a parent and I know that nothing I can say can ever bring your father back. But just because he is dead does not mean he is gone.”  
  
A car rolls up in the drive. John freezes in the kitchen, nearly-spoiled milk halfway to his lips.  
  
“In these cases, it’s best to remember the good times instead of the bad.”  
  
Karkat never forgets a special occasion, whether it’s the season premiere of their favorite TV show or the anniversary of Dave’s first hit record. And even when John’s worked late and come home to a cold homemade dinner and a boyfriend long since gone to bed, Karkat had always forgiven him.  
  
“Don’t think about why your father has gone, as the circumstances were painful and despite your instincts to place blame upon yourself, not your fault. Not anyone’s fault.”  
  
A knock sounds on the door - soft, shy, like touching a bruise.  
  
“Do not place your need to feel strong above your need to mourn and heal. Tears are not emasculating. They are natural, and should be indulged in.”  
  
John unlocks the door, but doesn’t open in. An intake of breath, perhaps, on the other side. A pause where a million hopes and dreams rise, fall, die, live again.  
  
“And don’t get too obsessed with the concept of saying goodbye.”  
  
The door opens, a phone drops, and he is almost whole again.  
  
\- - -  
  
He is still John Egbert, a man who lost his father and almost lost his lover and his best friend as well. They still fight, as couples often do, but they know enough about saying goodbye to not say it too often.


End file.
